Spring Training is nearly over, and in less than a week our Seattle Mariners will commence the 2023 Major League Baseball season with a home game against the Cleveland Guardians. That being the case, it’s time for my annual appeal to the team and the baseball gods that this season, the team’s 47^th, will at last be the one in which the Mariners make it to the World Series. Last year the M’s succeeded in making the playoffs for the first time in 21 seasons; at the time the longest playoff-less stretch in major American professional sports. Now it’s time for the team’s next stretch of futility to fall—their 46-year World Series drought. Of the 30 teams comprising MLB, the Seattle Mariners are the only club to have never made it to the Fall Classic. Based on what we saw last year, however, with the team’s great starting pitching, bullpen, defense and developing young talent, it’s a drought that may well be about to end…MA

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While watching last season’s MLB Playoffs, which included, of course, the first post season appearance of our Seattle Mariners in 21 years, for me a couple of things jumped off the page. Like the Atlanta Braves the year before, the Philadelphia Phillies, a National League Wild Card team that won 87 games, showed that if a team can get hot at the right time it can have a chance to win it all. Through the first 4 games of the 2022 Series the Phillies had beaten the eventual World Champion Houston Astros twice, and were primed to upset the favored American Leaguers. That Houston came back and swept the next two contests (both very close games) to win the Series doesn’t change the fact that the Phillies were right there; a bounce or two their way and history changes.

The other thing that became clear is that last year the Mariners were the 2^nd best team by season’s end in the American League. Even though the Astros swept them in the Divisional round, each game was incredibly close and each could easily have fallen the M’s way. After the hard-fought series, Astros pitcher Lance McCullers Jr. stated, “I said it the other day: I don’t think anyone else could beat Seattle. They were playing unbelievable.” Add to that evidence the facts that the M’s played the Astros tougher than the Yankees did in the ALCS, and that Seattle took the season series against the Bronx Bombers 4 games to 2, and we have a strong case for McCullers’ claim. From these things we can deduce that our team was close, perhaps closer than many of us realized when the playoffs started. So, after an off season to savor the Playoffs and swallow our (World Series) disappointment, it’s time to look ahead to the 2023 campaign and the opportunity it presents for this team.

To start with, for the Mariners the 2022 season saw the arrival of budding superstar and AL Rookie of the Year, Julio Rodriguez, who finished his first big league season hitting .284 with 28 HRs, 75 RBIs and 25 steals. For those of you who are old enough to remember Ken Griffey Jr.’s 1989 rookie campaign, J-Rod’s was better across the boards in every key statistical category. If his improvement curve across the next several seasons comes even close to matching Griffey’s, then our team has its next superstar centerfielder for years to come. 2022 also saw the continued development of 2^nd year (now going in to 3^rd year) starting pitcher Logan Gilbert, who went 13-6 with a 3.20 ERA and 174 Ks; stats that should have made him an All-Star. Along with Gilbert came the emergence of another rookie, George Kirby, who went 8-5 on the season with a 3.39 ERA and 133 Ks against only 22 walks! The rookie, strike-throwing, 24-year old phenom gave us a taste of the future in game 3 of the Divisional Round, when he shut out the Astros for the first 7 innings of what would end up being that 18-inning classic. And then there was the midseason acquisition of ace pitcher Luis Castillo from the Cincinnati Reds, the man with absolutely electric stuff which we saw on display in Seattle’s Wild Card round, first game, shutout win (4-0) over the Blue Jays. Castillo was dominant in that game, as he was in several others earlier in the season, most notably that classic contest against the Yankees at T-Mobile in August, won by the M’s in 13 innings 1-0! He’s already been signed to a long-term deal with the team, so he will be on the hill for the M’s for years to come. And with Robbie Ray still in the fold for several more years, our team’s starting pitching looks solid for the foreseeable future.

Similarly, in the team’s bullpen we saw the emergence of a bunch of sterling arms with wicked stuff, among them rookie Matt Brash, as well as the flame throwing man with the wipe out slider, Andres Munoz. Rookie Penn Murfee and veterans Diego Castillo, Paul Sewald and Matt Festa, along with Brash and Munoz, combined to give Seattle one of the league’s best bullpens in 2022, and the good news is that, barring trades, they are all under club control for 2023.

In addition to all this, in 2022 the M’s had one of the best defensive teams in baseball, leading the league with a .988 fielding percentage. After a slow start to the season, 2^nd year catcher Cal Raleigh suddenly figured things out to become a quality hitter with phenomenal power, blasting 27 HRs, more than any other catcher in the Majors, including the shot that ended the playoff drought against the A’s last September. Ty France, though he struggled in the 2^nd half, most likely due to fighting through injuries, still ended up hitting .276 with career highs in dingers (20) and RBIs (84); while 3^rd baseman Eugenio Suarez, the effervescent one, who was acquired last spring in a trade with the Reds, was unexpectedly solid defensively at 3^rd base and led the team in HRs (31), and RBIs with 87. Shortstop JP Crawford played brilliantly most of the season, but as the dog days ground on he slipped a bit offensively to end up hitting just .243, down from .273 the year before. Hopefully this season he’ll rebound to his 2021 form or better, and I think it’s reasonable to expect improvement in this upcoming season from all these guys.

Going into the 2022 season Seattle team president Jerry Dipoto, GM Justin Hollander and manager Scott Servais were hoping they had done enough to shore up the team’s offense. They were counting on young outfielder Jarred Kelenic to live up to the promise he showed in the team’s 2021 stretch run, and Jesse Winker, acquired in the same trade as Suarez last spring, to live up to his baseball card stats. Alas, neither happened, nor did Adam Frazier, an NL All-Star in 2021, pan out for the M’s, hitting .238, 35 points below his career .273 batting average. All this highlights what the M’s had to do this last off season: add quality hitters to lengthen the line-up. During the 2022 season our team was one of the worst in MLB (25^th) at leaving runners on base, stranding an average of 7 runners per game; wasting too much of our superb pitching due to poor offense.

To remedy the situation, and having lost Mitch Haniger to free agency, this winter the Mariners acquired erstwhile Blue Jays right fielder Teoscar Hernandez. You should remember Hernandez as the one player wrecking crew for the Jays in game 2 of last year’s Wild Card playoff round; his 2 homers off Robbie Ray nearly forcing that series to a 3^rd game. Teoscar is a solid, veteran player with a career .262 batting average and good power (25 HRs last season), and he should be a more than adequate replacement for Haniger, especially considering Mitch’s propensity for injury. The team also added another veteran free agent hitter in AJ Pollock. Across his 11 major league seasons the right handed Pollock has accrued a .276 career batting average and a .332 On Base Percentage (OBP) to go with 140 career homers. He also has a reputation for being able to hit southpaws well, which makes him the perfect platoon partner for lefty hitting Jarred Kelenic in left field, whom the team is counting on once again to start to live up to his vast potential. Based on Kelenic’s production so far this spring (he’s hitting .400 and leads the team in homers with 4) this may be the break out season for the 23-year old Seattle outfielder, which would be HUGE for this team. Lastly, with Adam Frazier leaving for the Orioles, Seattle traded Jesse Winker and Abraham Toro to the Brewers for veteran 2^nd baseman Kolten Wong. A two-time Gold Glover with a career .261 batting average, the Mariners will be looking (and hoping) for Wong to do offensively what Frazier didn’t do last season. With all these players there is an element of risk. Wong and Pollock are both coming off down seasons in 2022 and the M’s are looking for them to return to their baseball card production; I don’t have to tell you that Kelenic has yet to prove himself in the Bigs. Dipoto and Servais are betting on each of these guys big time.

So am I. With our team’s great pitching and defense returning this season, remedy those offensive shortcomings and I think we can finally overtake the hated Astros and make that World Series in Seattle a reality; something the Mariners have never done. Now that they have shattered their 21-season playoff drought, the next drought to douse is their World Series one—now approaching 47 campaigns.

It’s time to make that happen!

Go M’s!!